by Kate Elliott
She coughed. “There’s a button under the left thumb that triggers the lenses, and you can adjust for distance and focus with your forefingers on the left and right stem. It’s already pretty well adjusted for these conditions.”
Suddenly, a ship sprang into being, so close that Anatoly started and at once was looking at a different ship, a blocky looking gray hulk that bore two distinct scars on its hull. He scanned along the ring, marking several different ships until the yacht appeared again. She was neither large nor blocky, like many of the other ships docked here, but like the finest horses in Bakhtiian’s army she looked sleek, beautiful, and strong.
“She comes of good stock,” he said finally, lowering the binoculars and giving them back to Branwen. “But I don’t understand why these ships must look each so different from the other, most of them anyway, and why some are so ugly.”
“It depends on what they’re used for, who makes them, how much you’re willing to pay for advanced modifications, and how vain the owner is. A ship in a merchant fleet needs to be utilitarian, to have a large cargo capacity relative to crew and engine space, and possess reliability over looks and in some cases speed. Courier ships need speed above all else, and fail-safes. Yachts need speed, with comfortable interiors as a usual premium, and in my case with downside capabilities.” She paused. “That is, they need to be able to land on planet if necessary. That means they need a different kind of design. Most of the ships here are only spaceworthy. It’s always nice to have a look at her from the outside first. Shall we go?”
He followed her, squelching, to the entry lock and heaved himself over into the press of gravity. He was awkward, crawling up and over onto the entry deck, a little dizzy with the shift, but as he took off his boots he watched her surreptitiously. With a neat twist, she landed on her feet. He admired her grace. She took off her boots and put on a pair of shoes that looked more like slippers than anything. When he had put on his boots and hoisted his saddle and saddlebags up on his shoulder, he looked at her expectantly.
“Where’s the rest of your gear?” she asked.
“This is everything.”
“Oh. There are weight limits, but so few of us manage that level of efficiency. Is that a saddle?”
“Yes.”
They stood alone in the entry deck, sealed off from the pod and from the station by doors. She seemed hesitant to leave.
“Listen,” she said finally, “the truth is I arranged to meet you here in order to warn you. No one else was going to do it, but I, well, anyway, I didn’t think it was right to let you walk into that mess without knowing what you were heading into.”
“What mess? I beg your pardon, M. Emrys, but I just disembarked two of your hours ago from Duke Naroshi’s ship and found your message waiting for me at the docking portal, so I came right here.”
“Please call me Branwen. We go by first names on my ship out of courtesy to the pilot, who doesn’t have a surname. But no one caught you on your way over here?”
“Was someone trying to?” Put on his guard by this conversation, he began to wish he had belted on his saber instead of strapping it, as was polite, to the saddle bags.
“You’re a bit of a celebrity, in certain circles, those that have gotten word of what happened.”
“I sent word to no one.”
“Word got sent to Charles Soerensen, so that he could arrange transport for you, and he by law, by human law, had to divulge the information to certain councils, all of whom have sent representatives to get a piece of you.”
“Get a piece of me?” It occurred to Anatoly that Duke Naroshi’s behavior, alien though he might be, was more comprehensible than the behavior of these khaja.
She chuckled. “As big a piece as possible. You’ve just become very very important, Anatoly Sakhalin.”
Branwen had not exaggerated. Anatoly smelled them before he saw them. Like most transfer stations, Karana Station had an exterior ring of docks, with warehousing and living quarters in the tubes that led in to the central sphere. They took the slidewalk out the “z” axis to the quarter ring where Gray Raven was docked. When they passed through the seals onto the lofty ring concourse, Anatoly scented a crowd even over the dry taint of recycled air and the tang of ship fluids. Where the ring curved up, he saw seven knots of people arranged in a semicircle around one of the pier entrances.
“Why did none of these people meet me when I arrived, if they’re so eager to see me?” he asked.
“The ‘x’ ring is restricted to Chapalii traffic only. None of these people can get in there. And they didn’t have any way of knowing when or where you’d arrive.”
“You knew when.”
“Not when. But I figured out where.”
“How?”
Branwen smiled. “That’s what Charles Soerensen hires me for.”
“You aren’t part of his tribe?”
“Of his tribe?” She thought that one over. “No. Gray Raven is a freelancer. We’ve just been working for Soerensen for a long time now.”
“And you are working for Soerensen now?”
She nodded and waved him forward into the crowd.
Khaja were very rude. There was a moment when he and Captain Emrys forged through the crowd in silence. A moment later someone recognized her, made some connections, and then everyone began to talk at once, mostly at him. This would never have happened in the tribes, where people knew to respect a man’s silence. They jostled his saddle, and some idiot even made a grab for his saber, as if to find some leverage with which to stop him. Anatoly pressed through ruthlessly and grinned when he heard a few yelps of pain. Then, mercifully, they escaped the crowd through the pier doors and Anatoly relaxed.
“I wouldn’t,” said Branwen, evidently reading his thoughts. “It just gets worse inside. Those were just the hangers-on. There’s a whole ʼnother crowd indoors, the mucky-mucks.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The ones we couldn’t keep out. The ones whose presence here might make the wrong people ask the right questions, which is why they’re inside not outside. They’re waiting for you in the lounge.”
His ears popped as the seal equalized and the inner doors exhaled open. Branwen hustled him through the entry bay and when the trapezoidal door slid up into the wall above and they stepped through into a passageway, Anatoly was assaulted by three things at once. He smelled broiling meat, so strong that his mouth watered. Blond wood-paneled walls curved away down the passageway, so starkly out of place on a ship that sailed the oceans of space that for an instant he thought he had been transported magically back to the palace in Jeds. A black-haired youth galloped up and ran into him with all the gawky splendor of a boy who has just attained his first adolescent growth spurt and not yet learned how to control it.
“Madrelita! Benjamin just sold the protocol officer those two cases of Martian whiskey he salvaged from the breakage.”
“The ones that got contaminated with green dye?” Branwen demanded.
“Yeah. He told her it was that color because it was a special rare vintage…uh, does whiskey come in vintage or is that wine?”
“Never mind. Goddess. Oh, well. It tastes the same and we need the space.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the youth, turning to apologize to Anatoly and fixing him with a bright, interested stare. A moment later the boy recalled how inhumanly shy he was and looked at his feet.
“This is my son, Moshe,” said Branwen with a fond smile. They didn’t look at all alike. In fact, Moshe reminded Anatoly of someone, but he couldn’t figure out who.
“I am honored to meet you. I am Anatoly Sakhalin.”
“I know,” said Moshe, who was still examining his cloth slippers. “You’re from Rhui.”
“Time for that later,” said Branwen. “Are you hungry? Whatever else he might be, Benjamin is a good cook and I thought you might want to face the inquisition on a full stomach. I don’t know what kind of food you got on a Chapalii ship.”
; “I am hungry,” Anatoly admitted, who had learned at his grandmother’s knee never to refuse when a woman of another tribe offered you food. She led him around the bend and up two flights of ladders to the galley, Moshe trailing behind like an eager colt.
They fed him steak so tender that he was almost tempted to be greedy and ask for a second, but he restrained himself. One by one, as if the entrances and exits had been rehearsed, the crew arrived to meet him: the man cooking, who was evidently the quartermaster, the pilot, the engineer, and a big, broad-shouldered woman who dwarfed Anatoly in both weight and height. But he was used to that. Most people in the khaja lands beyond Rhui were bigger than he was.
Polite souls, they allowed him to look them over, looked him over in their turn, and took themselves off so he could eat in peace. Except for the engineer, who had to be chased away when he launched into an excited exposition about some new kind of meaningless word that he was experimenting with on the untranslatable system.
“Sorry,” said Branwen after they’d all left. “Florien means well, but he hasn’t figured out when it’s time to quit. Engines and computers always want tinkering with. He doesn’t always understand about people. Are you about ready to beard the lion in his den?”
“What lion?” Anatoly asked. Regretfully, he took in a last breath of the delicious aroma.
“Have another steak,” said Branwen suddenly, and of course, because she was a woman, it was polite to do so. “Moshe, go see if Summer needs any help with the cargo.” Moshe had been slumped in a chair pretending not to pay attention. Now he jumped up, made polite good-byes, and fled the room.
The lion was Charles Soerensen. As in a comedy where timing is everything, he came into the galley on the heels of Moshe’s exit. The other time they had met, Soerensen had boasted a retinue of three alert aides. This time he was alone.
“I beg your pardon, Captain,” said Soerensen, “for barging in, but I wanted to talk to M. Sakhalin alone before he meets the others.”
“What others?” Anatoly asked between mouthfuls.
Soerensen had impressed him as a man who understood and obeyed the laws of common civility. That he did not do so now meant, probably, that he judged the situation to be dire.
“Laetitia Nge Oumane from the Xenology Institute. Philomena Crohmaalniceanu, a senior diplomatist from Concord-in-Exile as well as her counterpart from Earth Protocol Office, Etienne Tan. A security official from Protocol, Abigail Pandit, whom you should not trust. A member of the shadow cabinet, whom you should, Yoshiko Sung Shikibu.” Soerensen smiled slightly. “And a barrister, Tobias Black, who specializes in thorny legal issues like this one.”
“Of course I appreciate your interest, and I remain indebted to you for your help eight years ago when I left Rhui, and for the transportation which you are granting me now, but what do these other people have to do with it? Why should I speak with them?”
“They act, to a greater and lesser degree, as representatives of the League.”
“I am a prince of the jaran. I have no allegiance to the League.”
“You’re human, M. Sakhalin, last time we checked. Surely that gives you allegiance to the other humans living under the Chapalii yoke.”
Soerensen’s placid manner was deceptive. Anatoly had learned to judge men and he could see how powerful a man the duke was: powerful enough to seem mild. Soerensen sat quietly in his chair, feet hooked casually behind the chair legs, and allowed Anatoly to examine him. Eight years ago the duke had affected a beard and mustache. Now he was clean-shaven.
“Of course I will give you a complete report when I return,” said Anatoly, reluctantly bowing to Soerensen’s authority. “But my final report will be reserved for Bakhtiian and my uncle Yaroslav.”
Soerensen coughed into a hand. “M. Sakhalin, do you still believe that Bakhtiian is somehow going to conquer the Chapalii Empire? I thought you understood he won’t ever leave Rhui. Nor can you return to Rhui. Nor can any report you deliver which alludes to space and the true nature of the empire and our lives here be allowed to reach him.”
“By whose order?”
“By mine.”
“It is to your advantage to use Bakhtiian to unite Rhui while you bide your time here.”
“It is.”
“What if I discover intelligence that will give your League an advantage?”
For the first time Anatoly heard a trace of emotion in Soerensen’s voice: Impatience. “I need to make you understand that it is your League as well. Bakhtiian’s army is great, but it can’t defeat the Chapalii Empire with sabers and horses. We have begun to put into motion a painstaking plan that will take years to come to fruition. That’s what I need your help for. That’s where all our attentions must be focused.”
“I know of your sabotage plan, and admire it, but my first loyalty must lie with Bakhtiian.”
“M. Sakhalin, let me be frank.” Anatoly could see that Soerensen was becoming a tiny bit annoyed, although the duke did not let the emotion modulate the cool tenor of his voice. “It is at moments like this that I wonder if you are ready to have an audience with the emperor, if your understanding of the situation with Rhui is still so… simplistic. Rhui is interdicted.”
“To protect it from the Chapalii. But the longevity treatments which I received are part of a study being conducted by Dr. Hierakis in Jeds, are they not?”
Soerensen blinked. “Yes, they are.”
“Or is Rhui interdicted to protect you from what lives on its surface?”
“What do you mean?”
Anatoly pushed the plate away and rested his forearms on the smooth tabletop. “You are a duke in the empire, I believe, M. Soerensen. I am a prince. I have now seen how a duke in the empire treats a prince. I agreed to let your people transport me to Chapal because of my loyalty to Tess Soerensen and to your alliance with Bakhtiian, but, in fact, I do not need your help. I discovered something interesting on the voyage from Duke Naroshi’s palace here to Devi: I could go anywhere I wanted on his ship. Anywhere. There was not a single place forbidden to me except some few chambers whose heat or radiation or foreign air would have killed me. I acquired the coordinates of his palace, and of the lands—the planets and systems—that lie within his dukedom. These include Earth, of course. I acquired a full manifest of the shipping tables for his merchant houses. I have this information in my saddlebags.” Captain Emrys made a gulping sound, like an exclamation swallowed before it could form into a word. Soerensen showed several subtle changes of expression, each one covered over by the next. “I admit that most of it is concealed in languages I do not know how to read, but I gained it as any scout attempts to gain intelligence for the army which he runs before, not necessarily knowing the full worth of what he obtains. When all of these, and whatever else I may discover once I am on Chapal, are given to Bakhtiian, and he can marshal the forces you and Tess Soerensen surely will provide for him, knowing his talent for generalship…” He paused for effect. “Or are you afraid to let him off Rhui?”
Soerensen steepled his fingers and gazed at Anatoly, his chin resting on his fingers. He had regained control of himself. His stillness was, in fact, his strength. “You’re an anomalous case. I don’t know what laws do apply to you.”
“The laws of the jaran.”
“Those laws don’t apply here.” He attacked from an unexpected direction. “The truth is, that it is Tess’s wish to keep Ilya Bakhtiian ignorant of space and of life out here.”
This information bewildered Anatoly. “But why should Tess Soerensen choose to keep her husband ignorant? It would be like leaving your most promising child untaught. It would be like leaving your strongest tribe out on the plains, all unwitting of the great war driving out beyond the frontier.”
“It would be like keeping a delicate scroll filled with rare poetry and ancient knowledge away from an open flame, so that it won’t burn away to nothing.”
Anatoly sat back, dumbfounded. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Is that m
eant as an insult?”
“I suppose it might be, at that,” agreed Soerensen, thereby making it difficult for Anatoly to direct his anger at him. “It is the current state of affairs. I need to keep Rhui interdicted for my own reasons, the ones you already understand: so that we can use Rhui as a base for the sabotage network and for Dr. Hierakis’s research without the Chapalii being able to investigate or even thinking it worth their notice.”
Anatoly was still angry about the insult to Bakhtiian. No doubt Soerensen counted on it. After a moment, he sorted through all that had been said, collected himself, and spoke. “You expect me to accept your authority as if it was Bakhtiian’s authority.”
“You are young to our worlds, M. Sakhalin. You know that yourself. What I want is for you to do what you’re best at: I want you to scout. You have the opportunity. You know how to make the most of it. When you return—” The unspoken alternative if you return hung in the air between them. “—I would ask that you meet with me first before making any further decisions or actions.”
“I agree, out of my loyalty to Bakhtiian, whose ally you are.” It was as much as Anatoly was willing to give up.
“Thank you. And you’ll meet with the others in the lounge?”
Anatoly did not want to meet with the others. They were not a council of elders nor of dyans, as far as he understood khaja custom. They held authority under a different guise, and he did not feel beholden to them. But he was beholden to Charles Soerensen.
“I will.”
Soerensen thanked him again and left. Anatoly finished his dinner in silence.
Branwen showed him into the lounge. Soerensen introduced him to the participants, and Anatoly noted at once the complex undercurrents of hostility, curiosity, and anxious expectation that flowed around the room. Pandit and Tan seemed united in opposition to Soerensen but at the same time kept making asides to Anatoly about how eager they were to work with Anatoly, seeing, perhaps, that he might become important. Pandit even asked him if he knew Vasil Veselov, which idiotic question he sidestepped. Crohmaalniceanu and Shikibu were clearly allied with Soerensen but not subservient to him. Black held himself away from alliances and in general said little, and the xenologist Oumane obviously cared nothing for any of the others and seemed intent on impressing on Anatoly how little he knew about the Chapalii and their culture and how easily his ignorance could create a disaster. But, in fact, except for Soerensen, they all patronized him one way or the other, either by being suspicious, condescending, or too friendly.